I'm a Linux Mint Debian user (well testing it anyway) and I'm having problems with Samba and file sharing. Basically I'm trying to share files via nautilus and sadly it crashes when I try adding the sharing permissions I require. I would be grateful to know of any fixes or changes I could make to rectify the problem.

This post is going to look scary but that's only because I'm suggesting you fix a few other things along the way. There are a number of things you need to change in order for Samba to play nice in a peer-to-peer environment in LMDE:

Then logoff and login again ( this is for the group changes to take affect ).

Actually, the only thing you needed to do to fix your specific problem was to add yourself to the sambashare group but you might as well make the other modifications to save yourself from the aggravation of diagnosing other samba related issues later on.

Please note that there are two peculiar bugs even after you make the above changes:

(1) When you create the nautilus-share and after selecting "Create Share" Nautilus will not only abruptly disappear but so will your entire desktop. Fear not, Nautilus will not reappear but your desktop will.

(2) When you bring up Nautilus don't expect the "share emblem" to appear on the folder you're sharing. It simply won't be there. It's also a problem with Ubuntu so it's a technical problem with either Gnome or Nautilus itself that is beyond the capability of the current set of software developers to fix. The only way to know for sure what you have shared and how it's shared is to issue the following command:

Thanks for the reply. Due to my need of Samba I reinstalled Ubuntu 10.04 on my main pc and Mint 9 on my laptop. I don't experience the bugs in either of these two distros which makes me think there is a underlying problem in LMDE. I will eagerly try LMDE again very soon and if the same problems persist, I shall implement these instructions. I'm hoping by the time I reinstall it, things will be well.

Thanks for the reply. Due to my need of Samba I reinstalled Ubuntu 10.04 on my main pc and Mint 9 on my laptop. I don't experience the bugs in either of these two distros which makes me think there is a underlying problem in LMDE. I will eagerly try LMDE again very soon and if the same problems persist, I shall implement these instructions. I'm hoping by the time I reinstall it, things will be well.

I would consider them more as an oversight by the Mint developers for not setting these things up at install rather than as bugs. It's been a long time since I installed Debian directly but I think it's consistent with Debian / Samba itself. All of these changes or additions is what you would have to do to convert a server into a desktop or modifying a default Samba server to accept remote guest access.

Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.

Since it's not a bug for Mint to fix it was included in an Ubuntu bug. Ubuntu considers it a problem with Gnome so it was passed to the Gnome developers. The Gnome developers are all working on Gnome3 since no software developer with an ego wants to be assigned to "maintenance". I've come to think of it this way - of all the ways of creating shares ( Samba or otherwise ) only nautilus-share creates ( however fleeting ) the share emblem. If they can't or won't fix it just delete the feature and it would be like every other method.

Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.

Well I've reinstalled LMDE on my machines and I'm going to give this a try. What's the point of abandoning something when things are not working quite right. I mean the whole idea of Linux after all is the community works together to improve the software we use. I do hope LMDE stays around for it works wonderfully on my old Pentium 4.

thanks for the info altair....I ran your suggestions but still had a access issue from windows...when I ran the net usershare info command , it pointed me to the var/lib/samba/user share where it showed "guest_ok=n". I changed it to " y " and am good to go...Also I am able to see the "share emblem" for my shared folders....

I had a different problem with the samba compatibility of LMDE, which was also solved by following your instructions:I just wanted to mount and use a samba share. The mounting and looking at the directories worked all right out of the box, but as soon as trying to use a file in some app that does want a standard path to the file it would not work, the compatiility path /home/user/.gvfs/mountpoint was only available after following your instructions.

I strongly feel that this samba set-up should be incorporated in the standard installation, since I think that this is a very common desktop use-case.